I’ve just returned from an action-packed trip to Toronto, where I learned to make hats, decorate cupcakes, and mix cocktails; where I tasted locally-brewed sake and oysters from all over the world, where I took a curator’s tour of one of my favorite museums anywhere — The Bata Shoe Museum — and even got to poke around in their artifact room! I attended something called a Literary Death Match, and then lost a great deal of unneeded dry skin during a sublime scrubbed with local herbs at the Ritz-Carlton spa, which is also where I stayed.

And I did it all for you.

This was part of a project with Canadian Tourism, American Express and Travel+Leisure , in which three bloggers helped to design dream itineraries to serve as a prize in a sweepstakes. The sweepstakes winner gets the itinerary, all expenses paid.

So there’s me, in Toronto, getting my cultcha (and cupcakes) on, there’s Mike Richard of Vagabondish in the national parks of Québec, and there’s Matt Armendariz of Matt Bites eating his way through Vancouver.

I’ll have more to say about my trip in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, enjoy a few images from the trip you too might take, and enter to win.

Featuring original miners’ cottages, wooden walkways, saloons, 19^th century churches and tree lined avenues, Arrowtown is considered one of New Zealand’s most well preserved gold mining towns.

Located a short half hour drive from Queenstown (commonly known as the adventure capital of the world), Arrowtown has small town laid-back atmosphere.

It wasn’t always so laid back. In the 1860s, while in the midst of a gold rush, the town was overrun with thousands of miners from around the world hoping to make their fortunes.

When the gold ran out, however, so too did most of the miners. But while some miners left, others, in particular, Chinese miners, arrived in droves, encouraged by the Otago Provincial Council desperate to keep the town alive. Today, the restored Chinese Village on the outskirts of the town provides a stark tribute to the conditions that these miners had to endure.

You can still find gold here, but it’s not quite what the miners had in mind. These days, most of Arrowtown’s gold is found in the autumn leaves that attract visitors from around the world and also in the liquid gold created by the region’s wineries and breweries.

From the up market Saffron restaurant (reservations a must) to the down market Arrow Brewing Company, there are plenty of places to discover this liquid gold.

For a uniquely Arrowtown experience, head for Dorothy Browns. This boutique cinema and bar, named, according to local lore, after a turn of the century photographer who frequented the town’s opium dens while co-habitating with a Chinese man, is a real treasure.  The bar doubles as a tiny bookstore, just to sort of place to park yourself on a winters’ day.

In the evening, order the cheeseboard and glass or two of the local vino and then collapse into the comfortable armchairs to watch art house movies in the boudoir-ish designed theater, complete pink and chiffon sheets floating from ceiling to floor and chandeliers dangling from padded Chinese silk ceiling panels.

Eat, drink, and then rest for the night.

In Arrowtown there’s a bed for every budget, from the Born of Gold Holiday Park for campers to the luxurious Millbrook Resort for those looking to be pampered.

(photo credit: Arrowtown Promotion and Business Association Incorporated)

By Michael Buckley

After building up an image of the world’s largest fish in his mind for decades, a traveler heads below the water surface for whale shark encounters in Donsol, the Philippines

Flickr photo by Kaz2.0

Once in a while, I go hunting for monsters. It’s an oddball sport: bizarre creatures can be tracked down all over the planet, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. The one I have in my sights right now is a marine monster: the whale shark. In 15 years of diving, I have never seen one. I’ve read about them, heard tales about them—to the point where they border on the mythical, in my mind.

We’re motoring along in a banca, a modified Filipino fishing vessel with bamboo outriggers. Six whale shark watchers from Canada, Denmark, Singapore, Australia—arrayed with outfit of mask and snorkel, dangling feet with fins over the side of the boat. At Gilbert’s command, we jump off the fishing vessel. I adjust my dive-mask and peer into the murky water. Nothing, zip. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a huge fin languidly swishing below. It disappears into the depths. Gone. Have I seen the tail-end of a whale shark?

On the next drop, the head of the myth, not the tail. We launch into the water. Where is it? I suddenly realize that I am right on top of it, looking at a polka-dot vista below. White dots mottle the grey dorsal skin of this massive creature. It is moving slowly, a few meters down, with a swish of the powerful tail-fin propelling it effortlessly forward. It’s an adrenaline rush to be swimming close to something this big. Adrenaline because of fear: big usually means dangerous. Swimming at a fast clip, assisted by fins—and powered up on that adrenaline—I find I can keep pace with the monster below for what seems like a very long time. But is actually only ten minutes.

It’s the biggest shark in the world, the biggest fish period. Fortunately, the whale shark acts more like whale than shark: it is a docile filter feeder, mostly dining on microscopic plankton. And that is why we can sight the whale sharks. When it’s sunny, the plankton are drawn to the surface. The sharks follow the plankton, vacuuming them up.

But by the end of our three-hour sortie, we’ve encountered five of the creatures. From mythical to five sighted is a giant step for me. It’s an exhilarating experience. Myth laid to rest? Not quite. I’ve seen one whale shark open its huge mouth to ingest plankton: the tunnel-sized mouth could easily swallow a small boat. I’ve got a lot of questions for Gilbert, our BIO.

BIO stands for Butanding Interaction Officer (butanding is “whale shark” in the local dialect). Gilbert used to be a fisherman. He still goes fishing, but only in the season when the whale sharks are not around. The whale shark won’t accidentally swallow you, says Gilbert, but there have been minor injuries caused by that big tail-fin coming into contact with snorkelers. The whale sharks we’ve spotted today are around 9 meters long and probably weighing in at 15 tons. Whale sharks can grow to double that size says Gilbert, just feeding on plankton, krill, and small fish near the surface.

In the course of the next few weeks, I have many snorkel encounters with these gentle leviathans. Some folks go out for two or three days. But I’m a glutton. I want to dive for ten days, to reassure myself that these monsters are real. The boats registered for whale shark viewing take a maximum of six swimmers. I team up with other travelers to cut costs on boats. Visitors run the gamut from thrill-seekers to divers, but the oddest are two women involved in some high-powered assignment in Jakarta, taking a long weekend break in the Philippines. No slouches on the action to be covered, their first stop in the Philippines has been to a crucifixion re-enactment, as part of holy week to the north of Manila. “They were flagellating themselves—there was blood everywhere! We stepped in blood!” they tell me, enthusiastically. First crucifixion, then whale sharks. One loves what she sees and the other is scared out of her wits: she surfaces quickly after her first swim.

Continue – Swimming with Whale Sharks Page 2

Guidebooks, travel tales, how to books, atlases, maps:: all of those make good reading for the traveler. Other sorts of books serve to inspire, recall, and illuminate travel too. Cookbooks, biographies, memoirs, stories real and imagined all have their place on the perceptive traveler’s bookshelf and with the winter holidays approaching, perhaps on the perceptive traveler’s gift list.

Musician Rosanne Cash didn’t set out to write a travel book, or an autobiography either, with her memoir Composed. Her vivid images of place and stories of experiences in different landscapes linger long after reading her words, though. A walk to the place she was living as a young woman in London, a road in winter in Tennessee, making her way through Manhattan streets on 9/11, taking her sorrows to the sea shore: whether central to the story Cash is telling or mentioned as background, her sense of place stays in mind. “For me me music has always involved journeys,. both literal and metaphoric,” she writes. So does her prose.

Brette Sember is a traveler as well. Her lens through which to remember and share her travels is food. In The Parchment Paper Cookbook she offers recipes for Thai lemongrass chicken, swedish meatballs, artichoke pizza, and baklava, none of which you’d usually think of to make with the parchment paper techniqu, which involves involves wrapping the food to be cooked up in packets. Sember offers tips and recipes for many sorts of international and all American dishes dishes to cook this way. Another advantage for the traveler occurs to me: should you want to cook for friends you are visiting, orif perhaps you are staying in a self catering place or in a hostel. when you cook in parchment there will be no pots and pans to clean up.

Visual art was the aspect of place and travel which interested Charnell Havens and Vera Marie Badertscher. That, and the life story of a Navajo in the American southwest, Quincy Tahoma. The two spent more than a decade following the often slender threads of memory and conflicting records and research concerning the artist’s life, while connecting with many who knew the man or owned his work. The result is their book Quincy Tahoma which is extensively illustrated with images of Tahoma’s paintings. Both story and image evoke the landscape of the American southwest.

Poetry and photography have their place in travel writing and reading, as well. Photographer Andy Hall has brought he two together in his book Touched by Robert Burns. He asked a range of Scots to choose a favorite poem’s by Scotland’s national bard, and then set out to make photographs that not so much add to the poems and the written reflections as extends the ideas offered there and opens up new ways of seeing and thinking about them.

Fiction belongs in travel reading as well, with places from India to Paris to Oslo to the west of Ireland to Argentina to the Yukon and all points between playing part in well read stories. As it is coming on Christmas, for fiction I’ll point you to Philip Gulley’s gentle tale of the holiday season in small town Indiana, Christmas in Harmony.

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It took me almost a year to finally take the minor financial plunge on sushi at Zen Cucina, which is located on the third floor of CentralWorld Plaza. I’ve been kicking myself ever since for the lost time, and the Salmon Mania Roll is a big reason why.

Zen Cucina, the upmarket spin-off of its sister Zen restaurants, certainly isn’t cheap, but in hindsight it’s also not unreasonable, especially if you can manage to limit yourself to just one or two rolls, which admittedly proves easier said than done. One bite of the soft, buttery salmon and you’re hooked, soon finding your stance of keeping the bill reasonable weakened to “I’ll just put it on my card.” There’s nothing wrong with a splurge every now and again though, right? This one’s well worth it.

The menu is huge, with standards included on every sushi menu as well as the exotic (marbled kobe beef sashimi) to the creative (baked rolls covered with cheese). The plain tuna maki rolls are fantastic: high-quality fish speaks for itself.

Whatever your order, though, be sure at least one Salmon Mania is included. Perfectly, lightly seared strips of salmon on the outside, with asparagus stalk slices and hunks of salmon tempura on the inside, finished with a drizzle of tangy, somewhat spicy sauce. Lord have mercy.

Zen Cucina is located at 4/1-4/2 CentralWorld Plaza, 3/F, Atrium Zone. +66 (0)2 613 1580-2. Open daily, 11am–10pm.

We could play the “Must-Eat Food in Bangkok” game every day for years and still have plenty of culinary fodder to feature. In that sense, the “BKK Must Eats” series will not be comprehensive, nor will it exclusively list dishes that are “the best” of anything (though it might, from time to time). The modest goal of this series is simply to spotlight, somewhat randomly, damned delicious dishes in Bangkok that I’ve indulged on many occasions, and that I recommend you indulge too.

More BKK Must Eats:
+ Early Evening Pad Thai on Soi Chidlom
+ Salmon Agemusubui at Sukishi
+ Spicy Tuna Roll at Yaki Ten
+ Grilled Squid at Pantip Plaza
+ Pumpkin Hummus at May Kaidee’s
+ Seared Tuna at Pla Dib
+ Mexican Food at La Monita

_{Photo credit and copyright Brian Spencer}